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Overview

Choosing a Style

Ask your professor which style is preferred for the course.

Consult a style guide for examples of using various citation styles to create in-text citations, bibliographies and reference lists, or use citation software to assist you in tracking sources used and building in-text citations and bibliographies.

Use a standard style, such as APA, and be consistent with it throughout your paper.

Style Guides to Consult

Academic organizations and some disciplines outline their own styles of how to cite sources and format research papers. You may have heard of or used some of the styles before.

Consult these print and online style guides for examples of citing sources in the text of your paper and in a bibliography or reference list. See also information about citation software supported by LETU Library.

"The purpose of a research paper is to synthesize previous research and scholarship with your ideas on the subject. Therefore, you should feel free to use other persons' words, facts, and thoughts in your research paper, but the material you borrow must not be presented as if it were your own creation."

To allow your reader to track down the sources you used by citing them accurately in your paper by way of footnotes, a bibliography or reference list

Citing a source means that you show, within the body of your text, that you took words, ideas, figures, images, etc. from another place.

Citations are a short way to uniquely identify a published work (e.g. book, article, chapter, web site). They are found in bibliographies and reference lists and are also collected in article and book databases.

Citations consist of standard elements, and contain all the information necessary to identify and track down publications, including:

author name(s)

titles of books, articles, and journals

date of publication

page numbers

volume and issue numbers (for articles)

Citations may look different, depending on what is being cited and which style was used to create them. Choose an appropriate style guide for your needs. Here is an example of an article citation using four different citation styles. Notice the common elements as mentioned above:

You should cite when...

Ideas, words, theories, or exact language that another person used in other publications

Using an image or media file that you did not create

Facts, figures, ideas, or other information that is not common knowledge

​

When referring to a source, you have three options for using it...

Directly Quoting

Summarizing

Paraphrasing

"Which option you should choose depends on how much of a source you are using, how you are using it, and what kind of paper you are writing, since different fields use sources in different ways." Grounds for Argument. When to Quote, Paraphrase, or Summarize a Source. Used under CC BY NC SA

You do not need to cite...

What is a Citation Generator?

Many different tools exist to assist you in the process of creating a citation entry. Many credible websites and library databases include citation generators for each source. Examples include the following:

The biggest mistake is in completely trusting a citation generator to make no errors. Make sure you closely review all citations created in this way. You'll also still want to refer to your citation style guide to learn how to format your works cited/reference page.